Uyghur Critic, 2 Years Into Life Sentence, Should Be Freed<\/p>\n
Sophie Richardson
China Director
\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200bSEPTEMBER 20, 2016 7:00PM EDT<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been two years since Ilham Tohti<\/a>, a well-regarded ethnic Uyghur economist and peaceful critic of the Chinese government, was sentenced to life in prison by the Xinjiang People\u2019s High Court for alleged \u201cseparatism\u201d after a grossly unfair trial. Tohti and his family had already endured years of harassment and periods of house arrest by state agents, but in September 2014 Beijing evidently felt it necessary to take him off the grid permanently.<\/p>\n Since then, human rights defenders and the rule of law in China have been undersustained attack<\/a> from President Xi Jinping\u2019s government. But the dynamics in Xinjiang \u2013 a region synonymous with gross discrimination against the predominantly Muslim Uyghur population, restrictions on religion and speech, economic development plans that favor Han Chinese over Uyghurs, and now a highly politicized counterterrorism campaign to stem violence \u2013 provide fertile ground for further serious human rights violations.<\/p>\n The signs are ominous: restrictions on observing Ramadan<\/a> are now an annual reality, and some Uyghurs are now being required togive DNA samples<\/a> and other biodata in order to obtain passports. China\u2019s state media reports on counterterrorism operations when it\u2019s politically convenient to do so, but we don\u2019t know how many local residents die in these raids<\/a>, how those detained in connection with the operations are treated, or even whether the state is responding to a credible threat. Hundreds \u2013 perhaps thousands \u2013 of Uyghurs have fled the country, some of whom have been forcibly returned under Chinese government pressure<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tohti had been well-placed to help lessen some of these tensions. He critiqued and proposed solutions to the economic discrimination against Uyghurs. He spoke passionately about how an independent legal system could ease abuses in the region. And perhaps most important, he helped Xinjiang-watchers inside and outside China understand developments there, and urged peaceful debate \u2013 not violence \u2013 among students, scholars, and others.<\/p>\n In heartening gestures of solidarity and recognition, the Martin Ennals Foundation<\/a> and theEuropean Parliament<\/a> have recently announced that Professor Tohti is a finalist for their prominent human rights awards this year. But if Beijing was actually serious about stability, economic development, and respect for human rights in Xinjiang, it would give itself and many others the most important prize: Ilham Tohti\u2019s freedom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Uyghur Critic, 2 Years Into Life Sentence, Should Be Freed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2986,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-2987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2987"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=2987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}